


Of Folded Flags

by jazzjo



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, F/F, F/M, Kid Skye (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 08:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3127865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzjo/pseuds/jazzjo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melinda hadn't shed a tear when she was handed the flag at Phil's funeral. Skye cried into her dress uniform and wondered how her mother could stand not grieving the man she loved. </p>
<p>But she saw the grief harden her from the inside out, and when Skye held her mother's flag in her hands she let herself weep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Her father had been a good man. He had died fighting the good fight. Skye had stood beside her mother, all of eight years old and trying her best not to shake or fall over as she heard the eulogies being given. 

 

All she remembered was that he had been the one to spin her around and toss her in the air as her mother looked on and muttered warnings to be careful. That he had been the one who told her stories of Captain America (which her mother swiftly countered with tales regaling the adventures of Peggy Carter). 

 

That he had been the one who understood her utterly before anyone else did. The one who made her understand her mother. 

 

She remembered loving arms, his fatigues rough against her cheek every time he came home and swept her into his arms immediately. She remembered his promises to come home every time, the ones her mother always told him not to make if he couldn’t keep them. 

 

_You couldn’t keep your promise this time, Daddy,_ she thought inwardly, _but I forgive you_. 

 

* * *

 

The knock that came that September morning had come in place of her father. She had been seconds away from bounding out the door for another day at school, as excited as she could have been to see her best friends after the weekend. 

 

Her Aunt Maria had called out for her check who it was before opening the door, but once she saw the sharply pressed uniforms and the stern expressions she ran full tilt into her aunt without opening the door. 

 

_If you see men in uniform coming up the front steps, Weiying,_ her mother had told her one night before she had to leave on assignment, _we are so, so sorry we could not make it back to you._

 

Aunt Maria had listened to them as they spoke in hushed tones, the keys she held in her hand jingling as they met with the hardwood floor. Skye had dug her fingernails into her palms, wishing more than ever that her parents were back home with her. 

 

“Which one?” 

 

“Skye, sweetie,” Her Aunt Maria had began, her voice cracking before she got through to the news itself, “Your dad won’t be coming home. I’m sorry.”

 

Wrapping her arms tightly around her aunt she held on tightly as she felt a hand rub her back. 

 

_Her father, the good and hardy soldier._

 

Both her aunt and her mother had told her stories of her father in his youth. How he became enamoured with the idea that he too could become a hero like Captain America. How he had trained and become the best soldier he could be because “once he held you, Skye, he had something beautiful to defend”. 

 

“Does Mama know yet?” Skye mumbled into her aunt’s neck as she was lifted off the ground. 

 

Her aunt rocked her steadily, her wiry arms holding Skye stable as Skye reeled from the news, “They have told her already. Her last assignment just wrapped up, so she will be home in a day or two.”

 

Wriggling her legs to be let down back on solid ground, Skye secured her backpack on her shoulders and picked up the fallen keys. 

 

“I’m going to school now,” She stated, thrusting the keys back into the palm of her aunt and turning on her heel to put her shoes on. 

 

Aunt Maria’s hands stopped shaking the moment she gripped the steering wheel. Deep breaths in and out steadied her before she even dared to step on the gas, and even then she drove slowly through the streets. Before Skye got out of the car, Maria turned around and promised to come get her once the day was over, earlier if Skye needed her, “just call me or Nat, kiddo”. 

 

Planting her two feet firmly on the ground, Skye dashed up the walkway and into the school building, sitting down in her place between Trip and Jemma before the first bell rang. 

 

Ms. Hand took her aside briefly during recess, asking about Skye’s lack of pranks or mischief as she pulled the elastic out of her hair and pink highlights tumbled out of her bun. Skye hadn’t said much, just matter of factly stating that her father was coming home, but in a box rather than on his feet. 

 

Sitting in the corner of the playground, Skye traced names in the sand while the pounding of feet and the squealing of her classmates rang out loudly. 

 

Jemma sat down beside her, leaning her head on Skye’s shoulder. 

 

“Uncle Phil was a good man, Skye,” Jemma murmured under her voice, just for the two of them to hear, “He was a hero.”

 

Smearing out the scribbles that her fingers had created, Skye rested her head on Jemma’s own, “Thanks, Jems.”

 

Grant had sprinted past where they were seated, stopping just briefly enough to kick sand in Skye’s face before running off. Jumping to her feet, Jemma had nearly gone running after him before Skye tugged her back down and assured her she was fine. 

 

The redness of the tips of Jemma’s ears and the little scowl that had taken over her usually beaming face were enough for Skye. 

 

Besides, Trip, Bobbi and Mack had gone after him and told him off anyhow. 

 

“How’s your little brother?” Skye piped up, covering Jemma’s hand with her own to bring her attention back. 

 

Jemma grinned as she began talking about her adoptive brother, “He just started first grade, and the teachers asked if Mum and Dad wanted to let him skip a few. They said he’d have to be like me and do the first few proper, then we can both skip when we’re a little older, if we want to.”

 

“Come on, Jems,” Skye retorted jokingly, “We all know you’re going to end up having a PhD at like seventeen or something if you want to.”

 

“I’m glad I’m here though,” Jemma remarked softly, “With you.”

 

Rising as the teacher called the five minute warning, Skye offered her hand to Jemma to help her up, “I’m glad you’re here too, Simmons.”

 

* * *

 

 

The rest of the day had been more or less uneventful. Ms. Hand watched over her passively while Jemma and Trip helped her out with different parts of the lessons as she zoned out from time to time. By the time the last bell rang, she hugged both her best friends and walked out of the school anticipating seeing either one of her aunts. 

 

Getting into the familiar black car, she was just about to pull her seatbelt on when a voice cut in. 

 

“I thought I taught you to always check who was in the car before getting in, Weiying.”

 

Skye’s grip on the seatbelt loosened as it snapped back into its initial position. Opening the door of the backseat, she bound out of the car and wrenched the driver’s door open to let her mother out of the car. 

 

Her mother, still dressed in her flight suit, lifted Skye into her arms. 

 

“You’re home, Mama,” Skye exclaimed as she wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck. 

 

Melinda set Skye back into the backseat and fastened her seatbelt before she returned to the driver’s seat. The drive home was largely silent, Skye’s _Mulan_ soundtrack playing softly and filling in as background noise.  

 

They pulled into their garage, getting out of the car and into the house that had been filled with anywhere from two to six people in the past few years, depending on when you looked. 

 

Her mother had made their lunch quietly, setting it on the table and motioning for Skye to pick up her chopsticks and start eating. 

 

“Can you tell me about Daddy,” Skye asked, eyes boring holes in the bowl of noodles placed before her, “Please, Mama.”

 

Skye didn’t see the tears she blinked back, nor the biting of her lip before she began to speak, “I met him at your Aunt Maria’s halloween party my junior year of high school. ‘Ria said he was embarrassing her because he wore a Captain America costume, but I was dressed as Peggy Carter and we just started talking. When he told me he had signed up for the Army he thought I would run, but I showed him my orders to report for duty and we spent the rest of the night laughing and talking. He was the kindest man I ever knew, and he loved you more than anything.”

 

“He fought because he wanted to protect me, right Mama?” 

 

Melinda smiled a muted smile, her eyes brightening slightly as she replied, “He wanted to make this the best world possible for you to grow up in. He started because he wanted to serve his country, but once you were born he knew he had a new reason to fight.”

 

That day they sat side by side on the floor in the master bedroom, packing away Phil’s belongings into boxes and talking about the past they shared. Melinda pulled a dress from the back of her closet — a black dress made for a child, one that she had always had in the back of her closet at Skye’s age _just in case_ , which Skye would need now — and handed it to Skye wordlessly. 

 

* * *

 

The sun was barely there that day, clouds scabbing over the brightness and leaving the cemetery shrouded in the faintest dusting of light. Melinda pulled her dress uniform on and scraped her hair back into a bun, dressing Skye and tying her hair back gently as she could in a neat french braid down her back. 

 

They faced the dug up hole together, Skye between Melinda and her Aunt Maria, while Natasha held her aunt’s hand on her other side. The gravestone proclaimed that this was where Staff Sergeant Phillip Coulson would lie from then on out, 

 

She received the flag in hands that fought not to shake, received condolences with a straight face and lips pressed together. She watched the freshly turned earth cover the man she had loved for a lifetime and held her daughter as she felt Skye’s slight frame shudder with each sob. 

 

Skye never saw her cry that day, nor for the days thereafter. She saw her put their life back together, setting new routines and making more meticulous arrangements since she was still on active duty. Skye saw her train harder, running marathon length distances in ever decreasing durations, going through flight plans over and over to ensure they worked, and brushing up her hand to hand with Aunt Natasha. 

 

She gave Skye a photograph taken the first time Phil had ever had to leave Skye to be deployed, the caption written in royal blue with Melinda’s precise hand. 

 

_Bye bye, angel eyes_. 

 

The next time Skye wrote her name, the _Coulson_ tagged on the end could not have been written with more pride. 

 

The next time her mother left to go on assignment, Skye couldn’t be more afraid that she wouldn’t make it home. 


	2. Chapter 2

She was sixteen years old, sitting in her room rushing out the pile of homework she had left undone for the entirety of her summer holiday when sharp knocks resounded through the house. 

 

Her aunts would answer the door, since they were downstairs in the kitchen either bickering, making out or making dinner. Taking her attention off Trigonometry for a moment, Skye’s attention drifted off to her girlfriend’s latest email. 

 

Jemma was in the last leg of completing the second of her two PhDs, alternating between being elated over how much she had accomplished (and how much her brother Leo had done with his first as well) and fretting over her last dissertation. 

 

Her keyboard clattered as she typed her response to the panicky worries of her best friend of years, allowing the details of the cosine rule to slip between the cracks of her memory as she assuaged Jemma’s fears. 

 

The primary bright spot that Skye could see in this last frenzy that Jemma was going through was that she would be done with her degree soon. Jemma would be home in but a week and neither of them could wait. The daily emails were no replacement for actually seeing her, hearing her voice or touching her. 

 

Being the sap she was, she missed the feeling of Jemma’s hand in hers. 

 

Hitting send, she turned her attention back to her homework, but just as she had finally reordered the components of the cosine rule in her mind, Aunt Nat called for her from the first floor. 

 

Bounding down the steps two at a time, Skye’s feet hit the landing before her eyes registered the sight before her. 

 

Once she realised that there could be only one reason for the men in uniform to be standing in the living room of their house, Skye wished more than anything that she could just retrace her steps and return to her room and hide. 

 

_Mama._

 

Shaking her head wildly, Skye wrapped her arms around her torso as she tried to reason with the voices around her and in her head. Her mother would not have left her alone. She would have fought tooth and nail to get back home. 

 

_This was why you never promised, isn’t it? Because you knew this day would come._

 

Skye wanted to be angry. She wanted to lash out and to yell at the men who came with the news that they were lying. That Melinda May didn’t go down without a heck of a fight, and that there was no way she would allow herself to come home in a casket. 

 

_Alone._

 

The nagging voice in Skye’s mind kept taunting her, reminding her that both her parents were gone. That both of them had gone and left her alone. 

 

She remembered her father, his smiles and his warm laugh, the lines around his eyes and on his forehead, the shoulders not too broad for her to hang off of comfortably. She had mourned him as a child, had cried her eyes out for days against her mother’s unshaken shoulders, wept for him into her mother’s strong embrace. But all Skye could think about was the fact that her mother had never wept. Had never grieved. Had never allowed herself to show one shred of emotion so that Skye could come to terms with the news herself. 

 

_Did she carry that grief all this time?_

 

Her mother had reminded her year after year that lilies were to be brought to her father’s grave on the anniversary of his death, every year. She had been there for a few of them, sporadically through the years as she tried to reduce her deployments, but she had always ensured that someone went with Skye if she could not. 

 

For months after her father passed, Skye had pestered her mother with pleas for her to retire. To quit the Air Force so she would not have to see her mother off to war zone after war zone. 

 

Melinda hadn’t said much, only replying with a singular sentence. 

 

_“I swore a vow, Weiying, like the one your father did, to protect our country and to do my duty.”_

 

Her Aunt Natasha had told her that it was all her mother had ever known, that she did not know how to trust herself to do much more than to fly jets and fight wars. That Melinda knew there were dangers everywhere and this was the only way she knew she could protect Skye from at least one of them. 

 

Aunt Maria had told her that in spite of everything that it cost her, it was a job. It paid the bills and it was a duty that Melinda had to fulfil. It didn’t supersede her duty towards Skye as her mother, but it came alongside it. Part of it, in a sense. 

 

After a while she had given up, resigned to making the most of the time that they had together when her mother was home. 

 

_The last time you were home, Mama, you convinced me to stick with Jemma no matter where she went because she would always come back. We’re three years strong now. I’ll marry her one day._

 

Her aunts escorted the men to the door, shutting it solidly behind them before turning to her. They said not a word, just guiding her to the kitchen island and setting a warm cup of milk and honey in front of her. Aunt Natasha sat down next to her heavily, letting tears fall from her eyes mutedly as she tried to hide them from Skye. Aunt Maria pushed the phone closer to her, extending the cord as far as it went. 

 

“Call her,” She murmured, holding the receiver out to Skye with a shaking hand, “She’ll want to know.”

 

Jemma’s voice washed over her like a balm, calming the shivers that emanated from deep within her chest ( _thoracic cavity, Skye)_ like the seismic waves at the beginning of an earthquake, at least enough to steady Skye’s voice. 

 

“I’ll be back tomorrow morning, alright sweetheart?” Jemma had declared resolutely, “I’m booking a ticket for the red eye back as we speak.”

 

“What about your dissertation?” Skye exclaimed, wincing as she immediately regretted calling Jemma. 

 

A gentle sigh echoes over the phone, the connection crackling as Jemma spoke once more, “I just submitted it. Doctor Meyer says the submission is just a formality. It’ll be official in a few weeks. I’m coming back, alright, I need to be there for you, and with you.”

 

“Thanks, Jems,” Skye whispered, barely loud enough for her own ears.

 

“I love you, sweetheart,” Her voice was as reassuring as anything could have been then. 

 

“I love you too, Jemma.”

 

* * *

 

When her father had died, Skye had seen what being handed the flag had done to her mother.

 

She never showed it outwardly, not at that time. Not even when they had left the cemetery with its newly turned earth and the gleaming headstone proclaiming that her father had found a new home outside of their own. Skye had never seen her mother grieve for her father, but she had seen the grief harden her mother from the inside out. 

 

Now it was time for her to receive the flag for her mother’s service. 

 

_Your service, Mama, did it include your death?_

 

 

She had been just a child of eight when she watched this ceremony for the first time. Holding her tears in had become too much and she wept her eyes raw and dry as her mother received the flag in barely steady hands held Skye against the starched blue of her dress uniform. 

 

Now Skye stood with Jemma’s arm around her holding her steady, her hands trembling as the flag was placed in her hands. Condolences came like raindrops in a torrential downpour, blurring into one another as her aunts tried to help her by handling most of the apologetic or pitying adults. 

 

Jemma took her into her arms, holding Skye as the tears streamed down her face before Skye had steadied herself enough to start walking away from the grave that now held her mother. 

 

 

* * *

 

They had not managed to bury her parents side by side. When she first heard the fact, Skye had nearly broken down once more, knowing that her parents could not physically be reunited, even in death. But she knew for a fact that no matter the distances between them her parents would find each other again. 

 

She had passed her father’s grave in her black blouse and slacks, the tie she donned a deep burgundy, one that had once belonged to her father. 

 

Kneeling down in front of it with Jemma’s hand resting on her shoulder, Skye had touched her lips to her fingers before transferring the kiss to the headstone. Jemma laid the bouquet of lilies against the cold stone, squeezing Skye’s shoulder firmly as the girl spoke quietly. 

 

“Mama’s gone, Daddy,” Skye choked out, “I hope the both of you have found each other again. I’ll be alright, you raised me strong enough to make it through this. Take care of Mama, wherever it is you both are. She’s had a hard few years since you left. I have Jemma, and Aunt Nat and Aunt Maria. I’ll be fine. I miss you both. I wish you’d be here to see me get married, to hold your first grandchildren, to spoil them and teach them about Captain America and Peggy Carter like you taught me.” 

 

When Skye’s words trailed off into broken sobs, Jemma knelt beside her in her black dress and held her tightly. 

 

“I promise you, Staff Sergeant Coulson,” Jemma spoke with the only confidence she could find at a time like this, “I’ll take care of her.”

 

With the people at her mother’s grave dispersed, Skye staggered over there and sat back to back with Jemma, speaking mournfully to her mother’s headstone. 

 

They sat there until the sun had set, the coolness of nightfall washing over the cemetery and chilling the both of them to the bone. Skye had shrugged her blazer off at one point and placed it over Jemma’s shoulders, but now she rose first, offering her hand to help Jemma up before they walked back to the car where her aunts were waiting for them. 

 

* * *

 

She visited the cemetery at least twice a year from then onwards. Both anniversaries were accounted for each year without fail, and every single time something major happened her parents were the first to learn of it. 

 

Skye had lain her mortarboard on her father’s grave and her honour cords on her mothers. 

 

She had talked through her proposal speech before both their graves (her father’s was more encouraging, but her mother’s had been more helpful). 

 

The day they’d gotten married, it was the first place they had visited before heading off on their honeymoon. 

 

When Devon Phillip Simmons and Viola May Simmons had both been born, they had each met their grandparents for the first time. It was by those graves that Skye told them about Steve Rogers and Jemma told them about Peggy Carter, after all. 

 

* * *

 

When she put lilies on her father’s grave and chrysanthemums on her mother’s, she let herself grieve for the loss of the people they had been. 

 


End file.
